Seattle Mariners manager Scott Servais isn’t terrible
Chris Phillips
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Scott Servais, Seattle Mariners.
Analyzing Seattle Mariners Manager Scott Servais short term performance with a long term perspective.
Seattle Mariners manager Scott Servais isn’t terrible.
Seriously, he isn’t as bad as some Mariners fans would make you believe; he’s actually almost average. Most good managers and coaches are only about average. The great Buck Showalter has a .506 win percentage. Bruce Bochy left the dugout last October with a .497 win percentage after 25 years as a Major League manager.
Hall of Famers Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa have .538 and .536 win percentages, respectively. Joe Maddon, hailed as a modern-day Miller Huggins (look it up), has a .537 win percentage. Scott Servais has a .490 win percentage, and he’s done it with some very flawed Mariners teams.
Servais’ first season was 2016, and it was also his highest finish in the AL West. The M’s ended the year in second place with an 86–76 record. He followed that up with back to back third-place finishes.
Last year, General Manager Jerry DiPoto realized the Mariners would be stuck as a mid-pack team if they kept the roster they had. He traded off his better players to begin a much-needed rebuild. Consequently, the team bottomed out with only 68 wins, good for last place in the division. Currently, the Seattle Mariners are in third with a 15–22 record. They are three games better than the Maddon led Angels.
In my opinion, former catchers make excellent managers. They have experience calling games for a pitcher, along with shutting down an opponent’s base running game. Then go to bat and face the same quality Major League pitching they just caught. All this is all while making sure they are superb pitch framers and taking foul tips or bounced balls off their bodies.
Mike Scioscia is a former Major League catcher who had success as an MLB manager, .536 win percentage, and won a title in his third year managing. Torre, Bochy, and Joe Girardi were catchers. Servais is a former Major League catcher as well.